PABLO HELGUERA TO REINTERPRET BACH’S MASTERPIECE INTO 24 WORKS AND WORKSHOPS OF PERFORMANCE ART

Renowned performance artist and scholar and Location One’s 2011-2012 Senior Artist-in-Residence, Pablo Helguera, will launch his most ambitious full-year project on September 21: The Well-Tempered Exposition, a series of 24 events in which he and changing groups of musicians, artists and performers wlll translate Johann Sebastian Bach’s legendary masterpiece into works of performance art.

The series, which begins September 21 at Location One, will visit multiple venues and involve scores of participants before its conclusion next summer, also at Location One.

The project will launch with a workshop of creative participants leading to a performance that includes performance of the focal “Clavier” pieces by concert pianist Beatriz Helguera before the performance. Exposition of the creative process behind the “translation” will be woven into the performance.

Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier was written as a textbook for musicians to learn the form of the fugue in all major and minor keys of the piano”, says Helguera. “One can find correlations with the format of the fugue and speech because during Bach’s time there was a theoretical relationship between those two disciplines. Basing ourselves on that, we willl translate the Clavier into spoken events. As we do this, we hope to also develop a textbook of sorts for speech- based performance.

Each performance will be formed by original selections from the WTC along with their performative reinterpretation. Helguera’s past work has been characterized by strong views about the nature of creative expression and the interactions of art, culture and society, expressed vividly music, humor, visual image, debate and the full range of performative art forms.

September 21, 2011 Prelude (project launch), Location OneNovember 18, 2011 Book I, part one, Location One (as part of Performa 2011-sponsored by Franklin Furnace)*February, 2012 Book I, part two, BerlinMay, 2012 Book I, part three, Havana Biennial, CubaJune, 2012 Book II part one, Mexico CitySeptember, 2012 Book II part two and final at Location One

*Franklin Furnace wishes to acknowledge The SHS Foundation’s gift in honor of Ruth Hardinger for support of Pablo Helguera’s “The Well-Tempered Exposition: Book I” at Location One on Nov. 18th for Performa 11.

Pablo Helguera
Born in Mexico City, 1971. Lives and works in New York Pablo Helguera (based in New York, born in Mexico City, 1971) works in the fields of pedagogy, literature, musical composition, and theater. His projects have included performance lectures, scripted symposia, and panel discussions with or without the knowledge of the audience, as well as a variety of experimental formats of verbal presentation. Helguera’s works have been presented in many venues such as the Liverpool Biennial, Performa 05, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, ICA in Boston, MoMA, among others. His play The Juvenal Players, produced by Grand Arts in Kansas City, was presented at The Kitchen in 2010. His orchestral work Endingness was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. He is the author of more than 10 books including Theatrum Anatomicum (and other performance lectures), a collection of performative works. His social practice project The School of Panamerican Unrest (2006) consisted in the creation of a nomadic schoolhouse that traveled by land throughout the Americas from Alaska to Chile, presenting collaborative performance and civic events in over 26 cities. He has been recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Grant; and in 2011 was named the first winner of the International Award for Participatory Art of the Regione Emilia Romagna in Italy. As educator, Helguera has worked in museums for over two decades, currently working as Director of Adult and Academic Programs at The Museum of Modern Art. He is the Pedagogical Curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial, opening in September 2011.

Beatriz Helguera, pianist
Born in Mexico City and based in Chicago, Helguera studied with Maria Teresa Rodriguez, one of Mexico’s foremost pianists , at the National Conservatory of Music, and graduated obtaining the Concert Pianist Diploma. She also holds a Master Degree in Piano Performance from the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU (Southern Methodist University). She received the Meadows Outstanding Artistic Achievement Award and the Epstein B’nai Brith Award. With her husband, cellist Andrew Snow, she is the founder of the Chicago Pan-American Ensemble (http://www.chicagopanamericanensemble.com), a group that engages some of Chicago’s finest musicians and performs the traditional repertoire of trios, quartets and quintets with a blend of classical Latin American and American music. She has played as a soloist with the Fine Arts Chamber Orchestra (Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes), State of Mexico Orchestra (Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de México) and others. Her chamber music concerts include live performances for WFMT Radio in Chicago. She is part of the piano faculty at DePaul University.

Location One is extremely grateful to The NY State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Location One’s International Committee for making this event possible.

June 14 – July 29, 2011

Curated by Claudia Calirman

OPENING RECEPTION:

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 6-8 PM

DATES: June 15 – July 29, 2011

HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday 12-6 PM

Location One is proud to present Sounds Good, featuring visual responses to a collaborative sound piece by artists John Aslanidis, Katy Dove, Phoebe Hui, Sophie Hunter, Miler Lagos, John O’Connell, Gonzalo Puch, and Zane Saunders. The pieces relate to movement, rhythm, vibration, energy, and the expanding visual field. The show opens on June 14 and will be on view until July 29.

Australian artist John Aslanidis’s monumental painting Sonic Network no.10 comprises four canvases that translate the vibrations of sound into a visual display. At first, the composition of colorful squares seems optically chaotic. This apparent chaos, however, is the result of a meticulously orchestrated, laborious process that recalls the madness of order. From far away his canvases look as if they are randomly composed, but as the viewer approaches it becomes clear that they are actually highly organized abstract geometric grids, with chance elements interspersed to interrupt the rigidity of his web.

Katy Dove’s work responds to the rhythm and movement from the collaborative sound track developed through group improvised music sessions. The human and textural qualities of the sound is echoed through repetitive mark making, the slowly drying action of the ink, and the geometric shapes that come from the hand’s movement. The resulting works—both on fabric and through the moving image–suggest a psychological state inherent in these processes. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Dove is known for her animations that juxtapose bodily motions with abstract shapes, mixing the organic and the geometric.

Hong Kong–based artist Phoebe Hui took inspiration from a harmonograph—a musical instrument made of two pendulums suspended through holes in a table—for her interactive audiovisual installation Granular Graph II: The Tank and the Pendulum. In this work, Hui invites the viewer to become a living pendulum, swinging on the instrument’s ropes and giving rise to a mix of vibrational patterns and sounds. Hui’s experimentations with music and kinetics also led her to create Vexation – for K, an electronic musical instrument that plays the composition “Vexation” by French composer Erik Satie. The audience can play the instrument by rotating a compass, thus creating a variety of tones through the contact of different shades of pencil marks on the soundboard.

British theatre director Sophie Hunter’s installation Lucretia is based on a fragment of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia—specifically, the image of a group of women spinning at a loom as their husbands are off waging war. Hunter extracts various elements of the opera, such as the orchestra, the narrative, and the opera house itself, and deconstructs and examines them devoid of their original context. She then reassembles these elements to record an altogether new score—a densely collaged soundtrack made of both music and noise—drawing a parallel between the act of weaving and the recording or encoding of information and memory.

Colombian artist Miler Lagos reflects on the relationship between the natural and the artificial worlds. His five-minute video Attraction shows a heart-shaped red balloon plunging into the water. The impact of the fall is dramatically amplified, creating the effect of an exaggerated explosion. To create his sculpture Cimiento, Lagos began with a stack of seven thousand sheets of paper, each printed with an image of a woodcut by the Japanese artist Ottawa Hiroshige, and painstakingly carved it into the shape of a log. In Tree Rings Dating, four hundred identical pages from The New York Times come together in a mesmerizing three-dimensional collage—a spherical form with a transversal cut simulating the rings of a tree. The sculpture alludes both to the recording of the passage of time and to daily events, since it is made out of newspapers.

John O’Connell, a multimedia artist from Dublin, Ireland, is represented in the exhibition by a series of drawings evoking an intimate and dreamy environment. Built from a myriad of interrelated elements borrowed from his make-believe universe, the drawings straddle the line between real and fictional, process-based and result-oriented. To create these fantastical compositions, O’Connell begins with hand-constructed miniature set models that reproduce the imaginary landscapes of the artist’s poetic, whimsical, and lyrical universe.

Spanish artist Gonzalo Puch’s wall curtain juxtaposes disparate elements in unexpected and often funny tableaux, suggesting intricate narratives out of random elements. Plants, flowers, and pieces of food inhabit his curtain with photographs, sketches, and drawings, creating an open environment populated by the artist’s imagination. It is a world where chaos is not a threat, but a generative force inviting viewers to think outside of their comfort zone. Though Puch is interested in a variety of issues, including science, music, biology, and environmental studies, his art draws primarily on nature for both themes and materials.

Zane Saunders’s series of ceramic-fired clay wall sculptures are inspired by organic forms. His designs utilize a variety of waving shapes that recur in natural landscapes. Saunders was born in Cairns, North Queensland, Australia, where he still works today. He explores issues related to spirituality and the environment, often juxtaposing elements from nature and contemporary life. Through his use of raw and organic materials, he conveys a sense of the beauty and wonder lurking in the world all around us.

ABOUT LOCATION ONE

Based in the Soho arts district of New York, Location One is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to fostering new forms of creative expression and cultural exchange through exhibitions, residencies, performances, public lectures and workshops. Traditionally focused on technological experimentation and new media, Location One’s residencies and programs have favored social and political discourse and dialogue, and acted as a catalyst for collaborations. With a unique environment providing individualized training, support, and guidance to each artist, as well as exposure for their creations and collaborations, Location One continues to nurture the spirit of experimentation that it considers the cornerstone of its mission.

GIVING MY BACK
TO THE NIGHT
I HEARD YOU LYING TO A GIANT

First Giant
Solo Exhibition and Live Performance
Curated by Jovana Stokic
Through the myth of Ulysses blinding the cyclopes Polyphemus, Davide Balliano begins his representation of the five phases of sleep
by enacting the ancestral fight against the obscure void that blinds us every night.

Live Performance by
Davide Balliano GIVING MY BACK TO THE NIGHT I HEARD YOU LYING TO A GIANT
First Giant
MARCH 3, 6- 9 pm MARCH 4 6- 9 pm MARCH 5 5- 8 pm

Location One is pleased to present Davide Balliano’s first solo show in New York and has commissioned a new installation from the artist for the occasion.

In the exhibition “Giving My Back to the Night I Heard You Lying to a Giant (First Giant)” Davide Balliano uses the myth of Ulysses blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus as a starting point for his representation of the five phases of sleep which he calls the “ancestral fight against the obscure void that blinds us every night”. Through dark and poetic combinations of performance, objects, drawings, and installation, Balliano explores his ongoing interest in the human mind and its fragile structures and contradictions.

Balliano’s exhibition and performance, conceived as a first act of a five-act cycle, symbolizes the first phase of sleep through the figure of a mythological Giant. In the Indo-European ancient tradition, the Giants symbolized the origin of life, the primal chaos that Gods had to fight with, in order to maintain the order of life. Specifically, in Greek mythology, a Giant pointed to a communion between reality and supernatural. In the Odyssey, Ulysses had to blind Polyphemus during his sleep, in order to set himself and his crew free from the cave where the Giant had imprisoned them. This metaphor of blinding, closing the eyes, as a beginning as a new start is the main punctum of this first act. The artist asks: “What is sleep if not a middle point between conscious and unconscious, between light and dark, between life and death?” The exhibition thus becomes an allegorical interpretation of the myth of blinding as an act to regain freedom. The gallery space of Location One, transformed in the cave of Polyphemus, is inhabited by strange protagonists: Ulysses and his crew embodied in abstract wooden objects and appropriated renaissance images. The ritual of blinding that leads to freedom is represented obliquely and frozen in time. The exhibition space relates to the map of vision itself and refers to the crucial mechanism of seeing: a play between two- and three-dimensional perception. These elements the artist deploys in both his installation and performance.

As a special addition to the exhibition, Balliano will perform live on three dates in March.

Born in Turin, Italy in 1983, Davide Balliano has presented his work internationally, including the Kitakyushu Biennial (Japan) and the Vienna Biennale (Austria), and is featured in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Cinisello Balsamo (Milan). Other exhibitions include Artist Space and PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, The Watermill Center in South Hamptons, Plymouth Art Center in Great Britain. His portfolio has been recently exhibited in the Archive of Via Farini for the event “No Souls For Sale” at the Tate Modern Gallery in London. He is one of the winners of the AOL 25 for 25 Award 2010. Balliano lives and works in New York.
Website: http://www.davideballiano.com

Jovana Stokić is the curator of performance art at Location One where, in Marina Abramovic Studio, she supports the growth of performance art by promoting the works of emerging artists on the international scale, organizing and collaborating on events using a network of people converging at Location One. It shows the commitment to experimentation across all art forms and points to recent efforts to return performance art to its central position within the gallery system. Performances, public panels and discussions promote and seek critical discourses on contemporary performance art practice and related issues.

Marina Abramović: Performing the Gallery/Performing the Museum

Tuesday, October 27, 2009,
doors at 6pm, talk begins promptly at 7pm
Public Discussion with MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ
Inauguration of ABRAMOVIC STUDIO AT LOCATION ONE
presented by Jovana Stokić

The discussion will focus on Abramović’s investigations of transformative quality of time in context of a gallery exhibition. The exclusive video material from Abramovic’s innovative group exhibition in Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery, held July 3 – 19 2009, will be shown. For this groundbreaking event, the Whitworth emptied every gallery space in order to create room for this unique work to develop and breathe. The show began with an hour-long performance initiation with Marina Abramović, leading up to a series of extraordinary encounters between artists and audience. Quite unlike anything staged before in a museum or a gallery, it provided a transformative gallery-going experience.

The evening inaugurates Abramović Studio at LOCATION ONE. Beginning October 2009 the studio, curated by Jovana Stokić, involves artists from Location One residency program in engaging with performance art. The ABRAMOVIĆ STUDIO within Location One is dedicated to exploring long-durational performance works through open-ended forms of workshops, panels and discussions. Marina Abramović, will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at MoMA in the spring of 2010 titled “Artist is Present” in which she will be performing continuously throughout the whole duration of the exhibition.

Marina Abramović
Since the beginning of Marina Abramovic’s career, during the early 1970s, where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the most historic early performance pieces and continues to make important durational works. In 2005, she held a series of performances called Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was honored for Seven Easy Pieces by the Guggenheim at their International Gala in 2006 and by the AICA USA with the “Best Exhibition of Time Based Art” award in 2007. Marina Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery.

Jovana Stokić
Belgrade-born, New York-based art historian and critic Jovana Stokić holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at the New York University. Her dissertation, titled “The Body Beautiful: Feminine Self-Representations 1970 – 2007,” analyzes works of several women artists – Marina Abramovic, Martha Rosler, Joan Jonas — since the 1970s, particularly focusing on the notions of self-representation and beauty. Jovana has curated several thematic exhibitions and performance events in the US, Italy, Spain and Serbia. Her recent exhibition “Best Regards form the Blind Spot,” focused on videos by Marina Abramovic, and younger women artists from the region of Serbia and Montenegro. Jovana was a fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the curator of the Kimmel Center Galleries, New York University. She has most recently written an essay for Marina Abramović’s MoMA exhibition catalogue.

]]>Jean Shin: And we movehttp://www.location1.org/jean-shin-and-we-move/
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:03:06 +0000http://www.location1.org/jean-shin-and-we-move/Video exhibit by American artist-in-residence Jean Shin. An exploration of the nature of music and the artists who make it.
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Location One presents And we move, an installation by New York based artist Jean Shin, which was developed during her residency at Location One. The opening will be held on Thursday June 19th from 6 to 8 pm and the exhibition will remain open to the public through Saturday July 26th, 2008.

Conceived as a site-specific installation, And we move continues Jean Shin’s investigation into the nature of music and its production. The installation utilizes the display of clothing, a video projection on fabric, unwound audio tape, embroidery, and compositional scores on prints, to explore how music is visualized and expressed through movement of the body, and how sound can be imprinted onto a surface. The result is the creation of a multimedia installation. The title And we move refers to the phrase iterated by the conductor as he begins to work with the musicians and evokes the dynamic relationship between them. It also refers to the way in which music moves its listeners.

In the video, the conductor’s back is isolated into a cropped view of his jacket as he leads the orchestra to play the lyrical score of Ma Vlast (My Country), a piece by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, and Ibert’s Flute Concerto. The single viewpoint creates a mysterious, suggestive abstraction of something alive, pulsing, moving. As the conductor engages with each second of every orchestral part, the image of his moving jacket speaks to his essential relationship as an individual to the group of musicians and ultimately his role in both interpreting and realizing each collaborative performance.

The artist has chosen to include the structural columns of the gallery in her installation, which she equates to the structural system of a musical score, with measures and repetitive lines. Found magnetic audio tape is wrapped around and extended between the columns in a fluid and expressive manner, evoking the act of drawing, and creating a line of sound within the architectural space. The audio tape also refers to the materiality of music and its making; metaphorically it refers to the socio-economic interrelationships that lead to the production of music.

Further exploration of the themes is provided by a series of five large-scale inkjet prints on fabric. The prints are stills from the video which capture the conductor’s body in action and become moments of music frozen in time: music and movement distilled. On the bottom portion of each print, the score of Smetana’s composition is printed continuously in a long horizontal band extending through all five images while the audio levels of the video are translated into a line of embroidery that runs between the still and the score, visually suturing the distinct elements together. The artist’s intention is to create a pause in the movement of a conductor’s action and contrast it with the musical language of the compositional score as well as the sampling of the audio track that is a record of the actual performance.

The use of clothing as representation of the body is integral to Jean Shin’s practice. In this new project, the artist is also thinking about the expressiveness of fabric throughout history (such as the Baroque and Hellenistic periods) and how it became almost more important than the figure, because it revealed the imprint of the figure, something greater than a simple depiction of the body.

Jean Shin’s residency at Location One is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Thanks to Solo Impression Inc. for producing the digital prints for this exhibition, to Richard Lanier, Joseph W. Polisi, George Stelluto and the Julliard School of Music for their invaluable help.

Reservations 212.334.33472×2 brings together two poet/musician duos in a night of New Poetry, Old School styleNew Randy is poet Holly Anderson (“density and loneliness of the City” (NYTimes)) and musician Lisa B. Burns (“my personal favorite”(Lenny Kaye)).Bob Holman, proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, is “Dean of the Scene” (Seventeen). Vito Ricci is “Downtown Musician Laureate #1” (World Magazine).New Randy: Q. What happens when a blue-eyed writer and a dark-haired singer conjure Sappho drinking vodkas in a neighborhood bar? A. They start writing about The Nature of Longing and the Longing for Nature. “If you’re young and taking love too seriously, if you’re old and giving up on it, if you’re a guy who can’t figure out women, if you’re a woman who’s not sure how strange you are, you could probably learn something from New Randy. Sure, it’s home-made… all the good stuff is.” –Jennifer Kelly, Splendid Magazine.Bob Holman w/ Vito Ricci perform from their new CD “The Awesome Whatever” (Bowery Records): Bob Holman, an originator of the Spoken Word and Slam Poetry scenes, shows how it’s done in nine tracks (plus an Easter Egg encore), produced and with music by his long-time collaborator in rhyme, master musician of Maspeth Vito Ricci. With the zipzap influence of the Hipperama of the Classics, Lord Buckley, and the on-kilter space shots of Captain Beefheart, Holman glides cross genres, boundaries and streams of consciousness like a your own personal tour guide on the road to Nirvana. “Nice work, Bob.” –Lou Reed

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –The Awesome Whatever!First CD in 9 Years from the “Dean of the Scene” (Seventeen Magazine)(when the scene is Poetry!)Holman’s last CD, “In With the Out Crowd” was produced by needle-drop wizard Hal Willner and released by the ahead-of-its-time, lamented Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, a label Holman founded in the mid 90s with music vet Bill Adler and legendary poet Sekou Sundiata. THE AWESOME WHATEVER is the first release of Bowery Records, part of the amazing goings-on at the Bowery Poetry Club where Holman is proprietor.The all-live, one-session, no overdub THE AWESOME WHATEVER is a milestone in Spoken Word. Holman’s most recent book, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture, 2006), a gorgeous, oversize collaboration with Chuck Close, adds a new graphic dimension to his poems so they stand up and dance with Close’s lush daguerreotypes. Likewise, in TAW, Holman expands the vocabulary of spoken word by actually improvising lyrics, adding gestural sounds as oral tradition placeholders, and making poetry journeys exploring genres from Reggae to Lounge to Flamenco.“Vito called me up one day and said he’d found a terrific studio, that’s how it all started,” says the Czar of the Spoken Word (Daily News). “Spin Studio on Astoria, how rootsy can you get? And Nic K as engineer — the guy was cracking up in my ear as I was improvising, the greatest solo audience a poet could ever have.”“A studio is a tool for creating poetry,” Holman continues. “Just as a comfy, inspiring writing space and a great pen and paper, or a keyboard that’s weighted and clacks appropriately are conducive to getting the words down on paper, so a studio where you can really hear yourself pushes the poem out in a relaxed, adventuresome way.”You can count Bob’s admirers on both hands, feet, and various other body parts: he and jazz violinist Billy Bang have an ongoing band, Bang Holman; he performs often with David “Pere Ubu” Thomas in his opera Mirror Man (recording available on Thirsty Ear); and in 2006 was in the original cast of Spalding Gray’s “Stories Left to Tell.” Lou Reed’s in Bob’s camp (“Bob is my kind of poet”), Ani Di Franco gives him “an A+!” and Russell Banks relates, “”Holman’s funky urban chants call back good memories of Beat collaborations between poetry and music. He’s keeping that tradition alive and well.”The opening cut, “She Never Phoned Me Back,” has the craziest history. Bob was performing at the University of California, San Diego, in a series curated by the great jazz poet Quincy Troupe. “We always try to get Bob on the radio, “ says Troupe, “because he speaks poetry. This day the host challenged Bob to put his theories into practice by improvising a poem right on the air! Bob suggested that the engineer throw down some beats, and they had a caller call in the title: “She Never Phoned Me Back” The result was totally outta sight, and was completely off the dome!” “I had several poems spread out in front of me,” remembers Holman, “”How Kora Was Born” for my griot, the Gambian poet/musician Papa Susso and “Ornettes” for Ornette Coleman – I was spending time with Ornette then. So I mixed, matched, hitched and hatched and the beats were infections. It just happened.” Indeed.The remainder of the tracks were all recorded at Spin Studios on April 12, 2007.The next track is the CD’s Break Out Hit: “Love Lake.” Written for Bob’s wife, the artist Elizabeth Murray, who died in August, this poem answered Vito’s challenge: “Bob, if you can write anything, why not write a hit song?” “Love Lake,” the result, begins with one of poetry’s great couplets: “You never thought it could happen to you/ I never thought the same thing too.” In the live TAW version, Holman takes on the glottal crunch of a carny pitchman gradually evolving into a heart-rending plea for transcendent universal love. The tune is chock full of what Holman calls “oralities”: those little spoken catch phrases between verses, the “uh-huhs” and “so far away I couldn’t hear it myself” commentaries of which James Brown was the master, and for poets in the oral tradition, serve both as fillers while the next verse is being concocted, and as the true improvisational interchanges with the audience that make a poem an event. Too much theory? Give a listen, and see if you don’t gently float downriver to the unity of the species which is “Love Lake.”The next cut, “The Meaning of Meaning,” is a totally deconstructed poem/song. It begins with Bob requesting Vito to do the Other Poem, which of course turns out to be the song they are doing right now! Confusing, you betcha, totally appropriately too: “What’s the meaning of meaning/What’s the purpose of purpose/ What’s the use – Can I use it/It feels so good to refuse it!” wails Holman. One critic called Bob and Vito’s version at the annual St Mark’s Poetry Project New Years Day Marathon, “Best of Show,” adding – “it was like hearing the individual beaten down by the implacable forces of history.”The next poem, “January,” is an ode to a “chilly-willy of a month,” a “month that seems like a year,” that keeps losing its place, falling in love, and forgetting it’s a poem. “Pasta Mon,” a hilarious paean to a Yuppie’s inability to break into reggae, “Pasta Mon starrin on hiz own tv show/Yesterday’s menu’s already obsolete-o/ Gonna show you how to roll a pasta-filled burrito.” Things get darker by the end:A nickel for a can & a nickel for a bottleA trickle down sound from the nickel that bought youAmerica the Beautiful in quarantineA cardboard mattress and a cardboard dreamBarbecue trashcans linin the HudsonDogs are howlin as you throw the spuds onPasta Mon’s recipes gettin kinda smellyRat ratatouille & vermin vermicelliThree poems with music follow – a praise poem “For Paul and Everybody Else” written for Paul Gulielmetti, the activist tenant lawyer who died last year, segues through a long musical ramble to “Night of the Living Dead,” addressed to two of Bob’s friends, Spalding Gray, the writer/monologist, and Pedro Pietri, the dada Nuyorican poet/playwright. Though they never knew each other, they meet in the poem, as they did in death – Gray’s body washing ashore after his wintertime suicide leap from the Staten Island Ferry just days after Pietri died on March 2 or 2, 2003 (he was on a plane at midnight between time zones when he passed, which is a point in the poem) from stomach cancer. Another praise poem for Pedro, “On the Street Named Pedro Pietri,” follows, a poem that was read in celebration on the day that East Third between B & C was declared “Reverend Pedro Pietri Way.” In 1989, Holman helped reopen the Nuyorican Poets Café on this block, and the Poetry Slams he ran 1989-96, the first in the City, were landmarks in the renaissance of poetry.“sweat&sexandpolitics,” one of Bob and Vito’s original raps from their touring show “Panic*DJ! The Plain White Rapper,” is recapitulated in a stripped-down very 07 version. The final cut is a long spoken word piece, “Picasso in Barcelona,” an ekphrastic (work of art inspired by another work of art) suite of poems based on Picasso’s teenage work as when he lived in Catalonia:In 1900 the futureOpened up its armsI invented the carAnd RembrandtTake off your clothesI will make a book coverAnd put a photo of me on the backTo make sure it sellsEvery morning I wake upGive myself a big kissAnd paint a masterpieceThen I have a coffeeThus ends THE AWESOME WHATEVER. If you want to hear the encore (secret track), well, the CD is enclosed! On the CD, the listener is dared to “See if you can tell which of Bob’s filigrees are straight off the dome.” For Bob, working in collaboration with Vito and Nic, gave him the support to take it all the way out – to launch his improvisational poetic skills to create a new kind of poem, which is in fact, the original way poems were written, I mean spoken! It’s Awesome! Whatever.
]]>2×2: New Randy & Bob Holman w/ Vito Riccihttp://www.location1.org/new-randy-bob-holman-w-vito-ricci-2/
Fri, 02 May 2008 05:01:26 +0000http://www.location1.org/new-randy-bob-holman-w-vito-ricci/2×2 brings together two poet/musician duos in a night of New Poetry, Old School styleNew Randy is poet Holly Anderson and musician Lisa B. Burns. Bob Holman, proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, collaborates with musician Vito Ricci.
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Reservations 212.334.33472×2 brings together two poet/musician duos in a night of New Poetry, Old School styleNew Randy is poet Holly Anderson (“density and loneliness of the City” (NYTimes)) and musician Lisa B. Burns (“my personal favorite”(Lenny Kaye)).Bob Holman, proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, is “Dean of the Scene” (Seventeen). Vito Ricci is “Downtown Musician Laureate #1” (World Magazine).New Randy: Q. What happens when a blue-eyed writer and a dark-haired singer conjure Sappho drinking vodkas in a neighborhood bar? A. They start writing about The Nature of Longing and the Longing for Nature. “If you’re young and taking love too seriously, if you’re old and giving up on it, if you’re a guy who can’t figure out women, if you’re a woman who’s not sure how strange you are, you could probably learn something from New Randy. Sure, it’s home-made… all the good stuff is.” –Jennifer Kelly, Splendid Magazine.Bob Holman w/ Vito Ricci perform from their new CD “The Awesome Whatever” (Bowery Records): Bob Holman, an originator of the Spoken Word and Slam Poetry scenes, shows how it’s done in nine tracks (plus an Easter Egg encore), produced and with music by his long-time collaborator in rhyme, master musician of Maspeth Vito Ricci. With the zipzap influence of the Hipperama of the Classics, Lord Buckley, and the on-kilter space shots of Captain Beefheart, Holman glides cross genres, boundaries and streams of consciousness like a your own personal tour guide on the road to Nirvana. “Nice work, Bob.” –Lou Reed

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –The Awesome Whatever!First CD in 9 Years from the “Dean of the Scene” (Seventeen Magazine)(when the scene is Poetry!)Holman’s last CD, “In With the Out Crowd” was produced by needle-drop wizard Hal Willner and released by the ahead-of-its-time, lamented Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, a label Holman founded in the mid 90s with music vet Bill Adler and legendary poet Sekou Sundiata. THE AWESOME WHATEVER is the first release of Bowery Records, part of the amazing goings-on at the Bowery Poetry Club where Holman is proprietor.The all-live, one-session, no overdub THE AWESOME WHATEVER is a milestone in Spoken Word. Holman’s most recent book, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture, 2006), a gorgeous, oversize collaboration with Chuck Close, adds a new graphic dimension to his poems so they stand up and dance with Close’s lush daguerreotypes. Likewise, in TAW, Holman expands the vocabulary of spoken word by actually improvising lyrics, adding gestural sounds as oral tradition placeholders, and making poetry journeys exploring genres from Reggae to Lounge to Flamenco.“Vito called me up one day and said he’d found a terrific studio, that’s how it all started,” says the Czar of the Spoken Word (Daily News). “Spin Studio on Astoria, how rootsy can you get? And Nic K as engineer — the guy was cracking up in my ear as I was improvising, the greatest solo audience a poet could ever have.”“A studio is a tool for creating poetry,” Holman continues. “Just as a comfy, inspiring writing space and a great pen and paper, or a keyboard that’s weighted and clacks appropriately are conducive to getting the words down on paper, so a studio where you can really hear yourself pushes the poem out in a relaxed, adventuresome way.”You can count Bob’s admirers on both hands, feet, and various other body parts: he and jazz violinist Billy Bang have an ongoing band, Bang Holman; he performs often with David “Pere Ubu” Thomas in his opera Mirror Man (recording available on Thirsty Ear); and in 2006 was in the original cast of Spalding Gray’s “Stories Left to Tell.” Lou Reed’s in Bob’s camp (“Bob is my kind of poet”), Ani Di Franco gives him “an A+!” and Russell Banks relates, “”Holman’s funky urban chants call back good memories of Beat collaborations between poetry and music. He’s keeping that tradition alive and well.”The opening cut, “She Never Phoned Me Back,” has the craziest history. Bob was performing at the University of California, San Diego, in a series curated by the great jazz poet Quincy Troupe. “We always try to get Bob on the radio, “ says Troupe, “because he speaks poetry. This day the host challenged Bob to put his theories into practice by improvising a poem right on the air! Bob suggested that the engineer throw down some beats, and they had a caller call in the title: “She Never Phoned Me Back” The result was totally outta sight, and was completely off the dome!” “I had several poems spread out in front of me,” remembers Holman, “”How Kora Was Born” for my griot, the Gambian poet/musician Papa Susso and “Ornettes” for Ornette Coleman – I was spending time with Ornette then. So I mixed, matched, hitched and hatched and the beats were infections. It just happened.” Indeed.The remainder of the tracks were all recorded at Spin Studios on April 12, 2007.The next track is the CD’s Break Out Hit: “Love Lake.” Written for Bob’s wife, the artist Elizabeth Murray, who died in August, this poem answered Vito’s challenge: “Bob, if you can write anything, why not write a hit song?” “Love Lake,” the result, begins with one of poetry’s great couplets: “You never thought it could happen to you/ I never thought the same thing too.” In the live TAW version, Holman takes on the glottal crunch of a carny pitchman gradually evolving into a heart-rending plea for transcendent universal love. The tune is chock full of what Holman calls “oralities”: those little spoken catch phrases between verses, the “uh-huhs” and “so far away I couldn’t hear it myself” commentaries of which James Brown was the master, and for poets in the oral tradition, serve both as fillers while the next verse is being concocted, and as the true improvisational interchanges with the audience that make a poem an event. Too much theory? Give a listen, and see if you don’t gently float downriver to the unity of the species which is “Love Lake.”The next cut, “The Meaning of Meaning,” is a totally deconstructed poem/song. It begins with Bob requesting Vito to do the Other Poem, which of course turns out to be the song they are doing right now! Confusing, you betcha, totally appropriately too: “What’s the meaning of meaning/What’s the purpose of purpose/ What’s the use – Can I use it/It feels so good to refuse it!” wails Holman. One critic called Bob and Vito’s version at the annual St Mark’s Poetry Project New Years Day Marathon, “Best of Show,” adding – “it was like hearing the individual beaten down by the implacable forces of history.”The next poem, “January,” is an ode to a “chilly-willy of a month,” a “month that seems like a year,” that keeps losing its place, falling in love, and forgetting it’s a poem. “Pasta Mon,” a hilarious paean to a Yuppie’s inability to break into reggae, “Pasta Mon starrin on hiz own tv show/Yesterday’s menu’s already obsolete-o/ Gonna show you how to roll a pasta-filled burrito.” Things get darker by the end:A nickel for a can & a nickel for a bottleA trickle down sound from the nickel that bought youAmerica the Beautiful in quarantineA cardboard mattress and a c
ardboard dreamBarbecue trashcans linin the HudsonDogs are howlin as you throw the spuds onPasta Mon’s recipes gettin kinda smellyRat ratatouille & vermin vermicelliThree poems with music follow – a praise poem “For Paul and Everybody Else” written for Paul Gulielmetti, the activist tenant lawyer who died last year, segues through a long musical ramble to “Night of the Living Dead,” addressed to two of Bob’s friends, Spalding Gray, the writer/monologist, and Pedro Pietri, the dada Nuyorican poet/playwright. Though they never knew each other, they meet in the poem, as they did in death – Gray’s body washing ashore after his wintertime suicide leap from the Staten Island Ferry just days after Pietri died on March 2 or 2, 2003 (he was on a plane at midnight between time zones when he passed, which is a point in the poem) from stomach cancer. Another praise poem for Pedro, “On the Street Named Pedro Pietri,” follows, a poem that was read in celebration on the day that East Third between B & C was declared “Reverend Pedro Pietri Way.” In 1989, Holman helped reopen the Nuyorican Poets Café on this block, and the Poetry Slams he ran 1989-96, the first in the City, were landmarks in the renaissance of poetry.“sweat&sexandpolitics,” one of Bob and Vito’s original raps from their touring show “Panic*DJ! The Plain White Rapper,” is recapitulated in a stripped-down very 07 version. The final cut is a long spoken word piece, “Picasso in Barcelona,” an ekphrastic (work of art inspired by another work of art) suite of poems based on Picasso’s teenage work as when he lived in Catalonia:In 1900 the futureOpened up its armsI invented the carAnd RembrandtTake off your clothesI will make a book coverAnd put a photo of me on the backTo make sure it sellsEvery morning I wake upGive myself a big kissAnd paint a masterpieceThen I have a coffeeThus ends THE AWESOME WHATEVER. If you want to hear the encore (secret track), well, the CD is enclosed! On the CD, the listener is dared to “See if you can tell which of Bob’s filigrees are straight off the dome.” For Bob, working in collaboration with Vito and Nic, gave him the support to take it all the way out – to launch his improvisational poetic skills to create a new kind of poem, which is in fact, the original way poems were written, I mean spoken! It’s Awesome! Whatever.
]]>Yuki Okumura – “I Me Mine”http://www.location1.org/yuki-okumura-i-me-mine/
http://www.location1.org/yuki-okumura-i-me-mine/#respondWed, 16 Jan 2008 20:24:21 +0000http://www.location1.org/yuki-okumura-i-me-mine/

I am a Shadow Man

January 16 Wed. – February 17 Sun., 2008
MISAKO & ROSEN is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition with artist Yuki Okumura : I Me Mine”. Yuki Okumura’s work begins with an examination the body; particularly, that of the artist. The resulting observations take various forms ultimately amounitng to a flexible fom of site-specific installation.

January 16 Wed. – February 17 Sun., 2008
MISAKO & ROSEN is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition with artist Yuki Okumura : I Me Mine”. Yuki Okumura’s work begins with an examination the body; particularly, that of the artist. The resulting observations take various forms ultimately amounitng to a flexible fom of site-specific installation.

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IXTLAN STOP
Her work is a restructuring of a mysterious event that unfolds in a dreamlike manner, the way a mystery novel develops as the investigator patches together the pieces of evidence found.

1. The Story

“I think the best way to describe my work is that I am inspired by things that peak my ‘interest’. Therein lies the back story and the evidence behind these unsolved mysteries.” -Among the artist notes

The above statement is artist Yoon-Young Park’s self-professed central idea surrounding her work. And it is true that Park is drawn by events that stir her curiosity which in turn lead her to conduct her own set of research to get to the bottom of it. The Pickton murder, the Virginia Tech Shooting, the Logheed Highway incident, the Riverview Mental Hospital, Vancouver’s downtown east side, Martin Luther King Jr., the Mt. Baker, Exxon Valdez oil spill, etc. were all events and cases that peaked Park’s interest. Park’s work is researching the evidence found in these cases, so as to reach her own interpretation of what had happened. Not only does she explore a variety of media to find such evidence, she even goes as far as to visit those very locations where the mysterious events took place. Park went to the actual location of the Pickton farm where the serial murders took place, making a video of her visit there. Not only that, she recorded her visit to the Riverview Mental Hospital on her own camcorder as well as to Vancouver’s downtown east side where she interviewed the homeless. Such discoveries of evidence surrounding existing cases and their scenery get complicated and mixed up within the context of Yoon-Young Park’s own story in a dreamlike manner. Her stories are her work.

The following three cases were used as motifs for the pieces that are being shown in the current exhibition:

The Pickton Farm serial murder case, Canada: A shocking murder takes place in a pig farm owned by a man named William Pickton in Vancouver, Canada, a beautiful place which is often considered heaven on earth. A total of 69 women either were killed or went missing, with many of the missing women’s DNAs found in the farm’s pig feed, etc.. A series of surreal and unbelievable events had taken place at the Pickton farm.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: In 1989, an Exxon Valdez supertanker was crossing the ocean nearby Alaska when an error by the captain led the ship to run aground causing an oil spill of some 11 million gallons of gasoline. The spill caused the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States and hundreds of thousands of ocean creatures were killed as a result. Today, almost 20 years later, the ocean has yet to fully recover from the disaster.

Martin Luther King Jr. murder case: On April 4th, 6pm in 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. He was shot by 30-06 Remington rifle. James Earl Ray was arrested for this case and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.

Yoon-Young Park’s works draw from such incidents and she presents the various pieces of evidence she finds in her work, especially in a special space she calls Ixtlan, where Park rearranges the details of the events to tell a brand new story. The story that Park tells is a completely different kind than that which we read or hear through the media.

For this exhibition, Park has completed two full mystery novels. One is the story she wrote while preparing for “Pickton Lake” entitled The Blue Pillar that Appears for a Moment, then Disappears and the other is The Dark and Unlit Logheed Highway. Both novels are fantasy pieces which include her own experiences in the setting, i.e. place, characters, as well as various imagined elements. Her stories are dreamlike and mysterious in that she combines elements of events from the above incidents with other mysterious objects and characters. On one level, her novels are her installation pieces, only in a different form, the only difference being that the materials are words and that the words are the various pieces of the installation.

2. The Space

“IXTLAN is the space you can reach right before death, after you have given up all your desires and the things that you love.”

-Among the artist notes

Ixtlan, the title of this exhibition, is a place that is described in Carlos Casteneda’s book “Journey to Ixtlan”. The Ixtlan that Casteneda describes in his book is an imaginary space that is somehow connected to the real world, but can only be reached after having given up all of one’s worldly desires and loves etc.. Casteneda describes three types of plants that help one to reach Ixtlan, namely peyote (a kind of cactus), jimson weed (white datura stramonium), and psilocybe (a hallucinogenic mushroom). These plants are natural plant substances which cause a kind of hallucination.

In this exhibition, Yoon-Young Park has in a way re-imagined the place of Ixtlan into a place where violence, murder, disasters etc. are non-existent, in other words, a place where such unfortunate events can be prevented from happening.

The various incidents and cases that have interested Yoon-Young Park, such as the Virginia Tech shooting, the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Pickton serial murders etc., are here re-presented and restructured in ‘Downtwon Eastside’. The physical ‘triggers’ involved in these incidents were the gun that was used in the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Exxon Valdez supertanker itself and the Walther P22 used in Cho, Seung Hee’s Virginia Tech shooting. Park sketches these three objects on the surface of a screen then uses these parts to create an equipment made to prevent tragic acts and/or incidents from taking place. The above-mentioned three hallucinogenic plants, i.e. peyote, jimsonweed and psilocybe, are then drawn over the equipment, growing all around it. The three plants in nature cover and therefore prevent these equipment from enacting the kinds of tragic events that they do, and by doing so, Ixtlan is imagined as a place where life and death have come to a stop, i.e. a new place with the potential for a new life and healing. In conclusion, Ixtlan Stop is a place where all the tragedies created by man’s desires and selfishness, are healed by the cleansing power of nature.

3. The Story within the Space

Reading and understanding the stories within Yoon-Young Park’s space of Ixtlan is an indispensable aspect of experiencing Park’s work.

Investigators, on the site of a crime, look around for pieces of evidence which, when put together, help them to come up with a believable story of what may have taken place. And as such, Yoon-Young Park’s exhibition invites us to participate in experiencing the space of Ixtlan where she has re-structured the ‘crime scene’ so to speak.

So what are the stories within Yoon-Young Park’s space? Park approaches the question of life and death and the vague separation between them by comparing the real against the surreal, past against the present, reality against the world of dreams etc.. The artist presents such a blurred and mysterious border between life and death in her depiction of ‘Downtown Eastside’, a mysterious looking installation piece made of a white screen, a large-scale mirror and bright orange paint. The mirror placed below the screen and the large pipe placed over the screen seems to make reference to the act of inhaling the smoke from the use of drugs. The pipe is a symbol of the straw used to inhale cocaine and the sheep skin and screen are also the drug itself. The mirror and the newspaper is each the mirror and razor (tools used in the process of measuring the amount of cocaine in preparation for inhalation). Within such a setting, Park casts the victims of the Pickton case as women living in New York’s downtown eastside and connects the two events by depicting the women as inhaling the drugs. Here, Park juxtaposes death and the act of inhaling drugs while simultaneously exhibiting the correlation between the two, as well as revealing the dream-like state brought on by the drugs.

Since the beginning of her career, Yoon-Young Park has always explored death and the disappearance of people upon death, about all those that die and the naturalness of it, even when it was caused by some other force. However, her obsession is not in death itself. Rather, Park is interested in that which causes death and the event of unexplained deaths. The deaths involved in those incidents that Park explores in her work are not simple incidences which occur as a result of some physical force or even by the tools that are used. These incidents are mired in mystery. Park takes these mysterious incidences and tries to understand and undo the mystery, either through her imagination or with the help of common sense and logic. The stories that Park unravels seem very personal and lyrical but these stories in the end ask the deep question of life and the common angst of living on earth.

We always tend to remain somewhere in-between. Whether it is the beginning or the end, getting on or off, matriculating or graduating, meeting or saying good-bye, and/or living or dying, etc. we are always somewhere in-between something that begins and will eventually end. Yoon-Young Park’s works too are located somewhere between as she searches for a certain world, place. Ixtlan stop or the Journey to Akeldama is all located in an in-between space, somewhere between the real and surreal, reality and imagination, etc., and where Park hopes to go might be a place where she dreams of, a place where bad things can self-heal, or the kind of world that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of, a place where the strong protects the weak. However, in the end, the place she is searching for is where nature brings unity.

Yoon-Young Park’s exhibition is a very special place, an opportunity to meet Park’s works in the midst of her long journey as an artist. Reading her stories in her work in an imagined space that is created by Park is sure to be a special occasion in our own journeys as well. After our meeting, we will all be on our own ways, but let us stop for a moment at Ixtlan Stop and read her works.

SoYoun Jeong was born in Seoul, Korea.
Since 2004, Jeong has been working and living in New York.
She is an artist working with mixed media. She has been working on video art, installation art, prints, sculpture, photograph and painting.

(From Jonathan Goodman’s essay “SoYoun Jeong: Between Fact and Fiction” for “Art Almighty ? SoYoun Jeong”.)
SoYoun Jeong is a contemporary artist educated both in Korea and New York.
Jeong has titled her show “Art Almighty,” imbuing her exhibition with a cosmic, if not necessarily pious, outlook. The proposals made by her work bring up interesting ideas, in which her predilection for an interface between nature and culture establishes mergers that feel highly contemporary.

In Uncanny Garden, her projection of video images onto two connected walls collapses the length of an entire day into an experience lasting only three and a half minutes. The real flowers inject reality into a fleeting demonstration of extended time. Jeong will transplant the survived blooms into the backyard of a friend from Brooklyn.
The conflict between artifice and reality is expressed as a screen projecting the sun’s illumination and an actual garden; however, the final experience is that of survival and transformation: those flowers that continue to exist are planted again in an outdoor field. The experiment is successful in that the process of life continues, even if damage has been done.

Crazy Moon, Jeong’s experimental single-channel video installation with four flat monitors, shows a moon dancing in a line or arc that defines itself in relation to the center created by the monitors’ display.
The moon on its travels creates many kinds of shapes, the result of its flight across the screen. The monitors approximate the sky, although in a thoroughly non-natural manner. Again we find the ideas of being and seeming beautifully implied in Jeong’s imagination; she attempts on a regular basis to join the poetic to the electronic.

In a third piece, Vice Versa, Jeong dizzyingly shifts from digital print to painting and back again. In two small double images, she begins by taking a photo that she then digitizes by scanning into the computer. Then she paints by hand over the print taken from the photo, at which point she scans the painting, printing the newly scanned image. The pictures themselves, striking abstractions composed of massed colors, are beautiful in their own right, but the complexity of their origins lends them a conceptual acuity that is very much of our time.

Jeong articulates a language which is not reductive but which, instead, synthesizes a union between that which is artificial and that which is genuine.
She looks to the future, combining means of expression that are not dialectically opposed but instead mutually supportive.

Jeong had had six solo shows and over one hundred shows. The latest solo show is “CTRL TIME: SoYoun Jeong” (Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY at Old Westbury, New York. 2007). Her works have been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, Samsung Leeum Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Japan, and others…

A reception for the opening will be held between 6pm and 8pm on Thursday, November 1st. The exhibition remains through Nov. 24, 2007. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday between 11am and 6pm.

1. First, the Internet is about content, not just a conduit for it. The nature of the technology changes content—not just access and distribution—with implications across the full range of artistic expression and subject matter.

2. Second, Location One is about convergence. We are bringing together creativity along the two standards that have governed the history of human expression: the axis of expressive discipline and the axis of available technology.

3. Third, Location One is a catalyst. We select talent, stimulate interaction, supply resources, and provide real and virtual forums. We enable things both cool and consequential to happen. New media transform artistic expression. Conventional barriers of time and distance are erased. With them depart a myriad of social, political and cultural distinctions. Access, distribution, participation become universal (and affordable).

4. Creative alternatives proliferate. These things are known. Less widely understood is the degree to which technology transforms content. Or, more accurately, continues a transformation that began midway through the 20th century. A work of art begins with its creators. But, more than ever before, it also encompasses its audience, interactivity and the potential for ongoing evolution.

5. Location One is creating a new environment for contemporary art, one that is rich in interdisciplinary context. The new media are interactive—but so have always been live events. Our unique opportunity lies in the linkage between live performance, exhibition and dialogue and electronic broadcast, feedback and interaction. Each of our activities will comprise some combination of live and electronic elements, according to the vision of their creators.

6. We assign a central place to new media and the internet in our presentation of contemporary art. Our focus, however, differs from others encouraging cultural application of new media. We believe—and this is our central belief—that there is extraordinary value to be gained from the collaboration of new media artists with artists from every other artistic and expressive discipline.

We applaud the countless efforts underway elsewhere to explore purely digital work, to enhance technical expertise and extend access and delivery; our contribution will lie in the implications of media convergence for artistic content. The work we commission asks contemporary artists—painters, sculptors, dancers, musicians, poets, storytellers—to collaborate with computer, video and new media artists. We have seen their minds stretch, their work grow, and their audiences come alive. What emerges from these collaborations is unique, unexpected, provocative…and sometimes brilliant.

7. The media re-invent the content. We will continue to put together imaginative combinations of proven and promising talents from both the physical and virtual sides of the house of creativity. We encourage them to explore, to learn, to discuss, to argue, and ultimately to create, present and perform. We support their activity both with fellowships and with commissions for specific bodies of work. We place neither demand nor restriction on subject, style or medium. We are catalysts. We provide access to the tools and resources of the new media; they are beyond the limited means of most artists.

8. We support visiting artists and artists-in-residence. We encourage them to develop their work to the needs and opportunities of the live-performance-and-exhibition/Internet-streaming synthesis. This is not, we have found, a simple process; friction and dislocation are part of the price of new creative experience. In 1999 we opened our space in SoHo. It enables regular exhibitions of physical, digital and video art, live performances, workshops and discussions, and a broad range of collaborative and experimental effort. The space is linked electronically to our affiliated locations in the US, Japan, and Europe.

9. We broadcast daily, through our website and related electronic technology. We present not only the events taking place at our home and affiliated spaces, but also a wide range of other programs and electronic projects.

10. We are very selective. We function less as an aggregator site than as a relatively narrow portal opening onto convergent artistic content of a very high quality. We have found that our approach appeals to a wide spectrum of non-trivial users of technology—some are artists, many are relatively young, most are interested in artistic, technological or cultural innovation. We view the discussion and debate that the Web makes possible as central to the development of an artistic vocabulary of convergence. Perhaps more important, we view the transmission of our artists’ works and the consequent perceptual, conceptual or interactive response of the audience as integral elements of the works themselves.

Location One is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt corporation incorporated in the State of New York, with funding from corporations, foundations and private individuals.

The party event will take place from 7-10 PM, the concert begins at 8PM.
Tickets $20, Location One Members free (includes 1 complimentary drink).
(become a member and obviate the need for silly tickets and drink prices).

Location One is thrilled to present our January party event with an exclusive concert by musicians Yuka Honda (former Cibo Matto) and Petra Haden (The Decemberists, Foo Fighters) who will play some new songs from an upcoming duet album on which they have been collaborating, as well as improvisations with Haden’s distinctive vocal layering over a soundscape of Yuka Honda’s music. Featuring Bill Dobrow (drums); Timo Ellis (bass); Cameron Greider (guitar, vox); Petra Haden (vocal, violin); Yuka Honda (keys)

Please come celebrate with us from 7-10. Cash bar (Location One members receive one complimentary drink) and light refreshments, additional music by DJ Normal, “Sonic” ping pong tournaments.

Artists’ BiosYuka Honda (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuka_Honda)
Yuka Honda is a multi-instrumentalist and co-founder of the band Cibo Matto. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with a diverse array of musicians, including Petra Haden, Sean Lennon, Medeski Martin & Wood, Luscious Jackson, and Caetano Veloso.

She produced Sean Lennon (also formerly of Cibo Matto)’s 1998 album Into the Sun. More recently she has been collaborating with downtown New York musicians Dave Douglas, Susie Ibarra, Vincent Gallo, Trevor Dunn, and John Zorn on whose Tzadik label her two solo albums were released. In 2003, Honda also collaborated with Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-We, under the name Yoshimi and Yuka.

In 2006 Yuka played keyboards on Sean Lennon’s album Friendly Fire. She is currently supporting Lennon while he is on tour.
Yuka Honda official website: http://www.damoon.net/yuka

Petra Haden (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Haden)
Petra Haden is a violinist and singer. She is or has been a member of several bands, including that dog., Tito & Tarantula, The Rentals and The Decemberists; has contributed to recordings by Beck, Mike Watt, Luscious Jackson, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Weezer, Victoria Williams and Yuka Honda. She is the daughter of the jazz bassist Charlie Haden.

In 1999 she released her first album, Imaginaryland, consisting mostly of a capella covers. In 2005 she released the home-recorded album Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out (Bar/None), a complete a cappella rendition of The Who Sell Out. The project was suggested to Haden by longtime friend Mike Watt, who also gave her the eight-channel multi-track cassette recorder she used to make it. Funded in part by a Durfee grant and wanting to perform the work live, Haden created a new arrangement of The Who Sell Out for a ten woman a capella choir called Petra Haden & The Sellouts. The premier live performance of the full work occurred in July 2005 at the Ford Amphitheatre as a part of the “sound.” concert series.

She has also released a self-titled collaboration with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, and a collaboration with accordionist Miss Murgatroid (otherwise known as photographer Alicia J. Rose) entitled Bella Neurox.
Petra Haden official website: http://www.petrahadenmusic.com

]]>Yuka Honda & Petra Hadenhttp://www.location1.org/yuka-honda-petra-haden-2/
Sat, 20 Jan 2007 05:01:37 +0000http://test.location1.org/events/yuka-honda-petra-haden/An exclusive concert by musicians Yuka Honda (former Cibo Matto) and Petra Haden (The Decemberists, Foo Fighters) playing new songs from a duet album on which they have been collaborating, as well as improvisations with Haden’s distinctive vocal layering over a soundscape of Yuka Honda’s music.
]]>January 20, 2007

The party event will take place from 7-10 PM, the concert begins at 8PM.
Tickets $20, Location One Members free (includes 1 complimentary drink).
(become a member and obviate the need for silly tickets and drink prices).

Location One is thrilled to present our January party event with an exclusive concert by musicians Yuka Honda (former Cibo Matto) and Petra Haden (The Decemberists, Foo Fighters) who will play some new songs from an upcoming duet album on which they have been collaborating, as well as improvisations with Haden’s distinctive vocal layering over a soundscape of Yuka Honda’s music. Featuring Bill Dobrow (drums); Timo Ellis (bass); Cameron Greider (guitar, vox); Petra Haden (vocal, violin); Yuka Honda (keys)

Please come celebrate with us from 7-10. Cash bar (Location One members receive one complimentary drink) and light refreshments, additional music by DJ Normal, “Sonic” ping pong tournaments.

Artists’ BiosYuka Honda (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuka_Honda)
Yuka Honda is a multi-instrumentalist and co-founder of the band Cibo Matto. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with a diverse array of musicians, including Petra Haden, Sean Lennon, Medeski Martin & Wood, Luscious Jackson, and Caetano Veloso.

She produced Sean Lennon (also formerly of Cibo Matto)’s 1998 album Into the Sun. More recently she has been collaborating with downtown New York musicians Dave Douglas, Susie Ibarra, Vincent Gallo, Trevor Dunn, and John Zorn on whose Tzadik label her two solo albums were released. In 2003, Honda also collaborated with Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-We, under the name Yoshimi and Yuka.

In 2006 Yuka played keyboards on Sean Lennon’s album Friendly Fire. She is currently supporting Lennon while he is on tour.
Yuka Honda official website: http://www.damoon.net/yuka

Petra Haden (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Haden)
Petra Haden is a violinist and singer. She is or has been a member of several bands, including that dog., Tito & Tarantula, The Rentals and The Decemberists; has contributed to recordings by Beck, Mike Watt, Luscious Jackson, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Weezer, Victoria Williams and Yuka Honda. She is the daughter of the jazz bassist Charlie Haden.

In 1999 she released her first album, Imaginaryland, consisting mostly of a capella covers. In 2005 she released the home-recorded album Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out (Bar/None), a complete a cappella rendition of The Who Sell Out. The project was suggested to Haden by longtime friend Mike Watt, who also gave her the eight-channel multi-track cassette recorder she used to make it. Funded in part by a Durfee grant and wanting to perform the work live, Haden created a new arrangement of The Who Sell Out for a ten woman a capella choir called Petra Haden & The Sellouts. The premier live performance of the full work occurred in July 2005 at the Ford Amphitheatre as a part of the “sound.” concert series.

She has also released a self-titled collaboration with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, and a collaboration with accordionist Miss Murgatroid (otherwise known as photographer Alicia J. Rose) entitled Bella Neurox.
Petra Haden official website: http://www.petrahadenmusic.com

Artist-writer Antoinette LaFarge will talk about DEMOTIC, a performance work presented at the Baltimore Theater Project on Nov 2-5. Demotic was conceived by LaFarge, directed by Robert Allen and features sound artists Maria de los Angeles Esteves and Jeff Ridenour and actor Tracey A. Leigh.

DEMOTIC begins with the idea that the Internet is now so central to American life that it has become our new town hall, an ever-changing space of informed debate, passionate opinion, and misinformation. Like the Internet, Demotic is a rolling improvisation among the different kinds of performers using such technologies as text-to-speech synthesis, chatroom-type forums, and sound mashups. One of the central controlling devices of Demotic is a virtual world hosted on the West Coast whose avatars direct the progress of the piece at various points.

]]>http://www.location1.org/antoinette-lafarge-on-demotic/feed/0*IMHO* with Brian Tollehttp://www.location1.org/imho-with-brian-tolle/
http://www.location1.org/imho-with-brian-tolle/#respondWed, 27 Sep 2006 05:01:42 +0000http://test.location1.org/events/imho-with-brian-tolle/September 27, 2006 BRIAN TOLLELocation One’s HEATHER WAGNER (Onsite ‘Pataphysician’ and director of online projects) begins a new season of *IMHO* converstions with artists. This week’s guest is Brian Tolle, best know for his “Irish Hunger Memorial” in Lower Manhattan. They will discuss the creation of the memorial and other works, past and future.http://www.bombsite.com/tolle/tolle.html

]]>http://www.location1.org/imho-with-brian-tolle/feed/0IRP Exhibition 2004http://www.location1.org/irp-exhibition-2004/
Fri, 28 May 2004 15:37:54 +0000http://test.location1.org/news/irp-exhibition-2004/On Thursday, May 27, Location One presented its third annual artist-in-residence group exhibition. Eight works ranging from video, to sculpture, to robotic structures, to interactive installations were developed by emerging international artists during their stay. Featured in the main gallery, the show will be open to the public through Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 and will be streamed live on www.location1.org
]]>Koki Tanaka, Hsiao Sheng Chien, Mark Themann,
Federico Muelas, Miguel Soares, Alexandra do Carmo, Vincent Lamouroux

On Thursday, May 27, Location One presents its third annual artist-in-residence group exhibition. Eight works ranging from video, to sculpture, to robotic structures, to interactive installations were developed by emerging international artists during their stay. Featured in the main gallery, the show will be open to the public through Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 and will be streamed live on www.location1.org

Vincent Lamouroux (France)
A site-specific wall drawing that consists of simple sets of words culled by the artist from Joseph Lanza’s writings “Gravity” as he investigates roller coaster structures as a social and cultural phenomenon in the US.

Alexandra do Carmo (Portugal)
In the installation “50 Richards” the artist explores issues of surveillance and voyeurism. The visitor is invited to sit at a microscope to view a continuous recording of the artist’s studio practice. Music inspired by the video and composed by Paul de Jong pours in from the ceiling.

Miguel Soares (Portugal)
H2O is a 3d animation about marine trash and the often absurd reactions of maritime flora and fauna to these “alien visitors”.

Federico Muelas (Spain)
What do Apples Sound Like? An interactive audio visual environment where the artist questions human perception by translating into sound the spatial values of the 365 vertices on an apple – symbol of wholeness and forbidden knowledge.

Hsiao Sheng Chien (Taiwan)
Watch is an installation with video robot and sensor that features an eye. The robot perceives the presence of the visitor and begins interacting with him, drawing him in, watching him and then pushing him away.

Koki Tanaka (Japan)
Things Happen Again presents a humorous reflection on the question of how we perceive the world by filming the simple and repetitive motion of rolls of tape that glide inside the frame.

Mark Themann (Germany/Australia)
Go Into This Space presents an evocative single screen DVD work, a silent film that consists of phasing texts, interrupted by flashing color fields, and utilizing structures of invocation and evocation.Location One is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the convergence between visual, performing and digital arts in a time of rapidly changing technology.
Location One’s Residency Program is a central part of its activities. It encourages collaboration by inviting artists from all over the world and different media to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems, and to develop new work.